USER MANUAL
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Table Of Content 1 Introduction.......................................................................................................................5 1.1 About Alicia’s Piano.................................................................................................5 1.2 About KONTAKT / KONTAKT PLAYER...........................................................................6 2 Getting Started.......................................................................................................
1 Introduction The sound of Alicia Keys’ favorite composer piano, recorded in her own studio, Oven Studios on Long Island, New York, is now available to you as ALICIA’S KEYS.
1.2 About KONTAKT / KONTAKT PLAYER ALICIA’S KEYS is an Instrument powered by KONTAKT; you will, therefore, have to have KONTAKT or the free KONTAKT PLAYER installed on your computer in order to use ALICIA’S KEYS. Refer to the KONTAKT / KONTAKT PLAYER documentation to learn how to load and configure KONTAKT Instruments.
Enabling Multi-processor Support in Stand-alone mode If you are using ALICIA’S KEYS on a computer with two or more processors (or processor cores), make sure to enable multi-processor / multi-core CPU support in KONTAKT’s / KONTAKT PLAYER’s Options dialog: 1. To open the Options dialog, click the Options icon in KONTAKT’s / KONTAKT PLAYER’s main header. 2. In the Options dialog, select the Engine tab. 3.
2 Getting Started This section will take you through a few basic tasks to get you started with your new piano. These steps will help you begin to get the sound you want out of ALICIA’S KEYS. For more detail on how the various controls work, refer to the Interface and Operation section of this manual. 2.2.1 Choosing a Preset Once you’ve experimented a bit with the dry sound, try the different factory presets until you find a suitable sound.
3 Interface and Operation This chapter will introduce you to ALICIA’S KEYS specific controls, which are situated in the Performance View section of the Instrument within your KONTAKT / KONTAKT PLAYER software. ►► Press the Performance View button (PV) in the lower right of the Instrument Header to show/hide the Performance View.
3.1.2 Sliders •• To change a slider’s value, click and drag the slider to the right to increase, or to the left to decrease the value. •• Sliders can be fine-tuned by holding down your computer keyboard’s [Shift] key as you move the slider. •• [Ctrl] + Click (Mac OS® X: [Cmd] + Click) resets a slider to its default value. 3.1.3 Buttons These are all toggles – click once to turn on, again to turn off. The background of most buttons will change its color for the On and Off states. 3.1.
3.2 The Performance View The Performance View holds all the relevant controls for shaping the sound of the piano. Instrument Header with Performance View open 3.3 Choosing and saving Presets ALICIA’S KEYS offers a selection of a number of factory and user effect presets. Choosing a Factory Preset The factory presets offer the piano in three different rooms: Hall, Auditorium or Studio, in small or large sizes.
3.4 Settings Press the Settings button in the Performance View to open the Settings window. The Settings controls are organized in five categories, each of which has its own tab: Room, Keys, Pedal, Resonance and Noise. 3.4.1 The Room Tab The settings in the Room tab let you add a room simulation of your choice to the piano sound. The dimensions of a room and the type of surface materials have a big impact on the sound of the piano.
•• Location: These predefined convolution effects allow you to determine the reverb that would be experienced in different acoustic spaces. Select one of the following rooms to load a convolution preset: ◦◦ Hall ◦◦ Auditorium ◦◦ Studio •• Size: Adjusts the virtual size of the room. Stereo Image •• Spread: adjusts the width of the stereo effect. The larger the value, the greater the width of the stereo image and vice versa.
►► Select the entry that matches your playing style from the Velocity Curve menu. Finger Attack Turn the Latency knob to adjust how much the sample start is offset. At 100% you get a slower attack but more of the noise as the finger touches the key. With lower values you get a quicker attack and less latency. Select a low percentage for low latency. Select a high percentage for a larger part of the original attack of the note to be included. The default latency value is 50%.
3.4.3 The Pedal Tab The settings in the Pedal tab let you adjust how the piano pedals will respond to pedal action. Alicia’s piano has the Sustain (Damper) and Sustenuto pedals. The Sustain Pedal causes the dampers to be lifted off all strings of the piano, allowing them to ring out while the pedal is depressed. The Sustenuto Pedal has the same effect, but only on the notes that are played before the pedal is depressed, and afterwards are released.
The same effect can be achieved without the use of the pedal, by silently pressing the keys corresponding to these harmonics instead (This has the same effect as pressing the Sustain Pedal on these strings). Using this method allows you to determine exactly which harmonics you would like to resonate. Sympathetic Resonance Rules Setting these rules allows you to determine how much Sympathetic Resonance is experienced when playing the piano.
3.4.5 The Noise Tab The settings in the Noise tab help further to achieve a more authentic piano sound. Here you can adjust how much sound the keys and pedals make when they are depressed and released. Furthermore, you can control the amount of microphone noise to create a static microphone effect. The Noise tab Mechanical Key Noise •• Pedal Up: Level of the sound generated when a key bounces back into position after being released while the pedal is not depressed.
4 Credits Produced by: Alicia Keys Edited and programmed by: Scarbee Concept created and piano sound engineered by: Ann Mincieli Script programming: Nils Liberg Additional samples recorded by: Miki Tsutsumi Convolution Reverb IRs by: Ernest Cholakis ALICIA’S KEYS User Manual – 18
